e-Government stakeholders—Who are they and what do they want?

There is an increasing recognition that various stakeholder groups for e-government have a significant role to play in ensuring the long-term success of the e-government enterprise. This article seeks to contribute to the understanding of the stakeholders’ multiple perspectives by proposing typologies of stakeholder roles, and stakeholder benefits, respectively, and embedding these in a stakeholder benefits analysis tool. A literature review is used to surface the diverse existing categorizations of e-government stakeholders and their interests and the benefits sought. This review informs a proposal for a typology of stakeholder roles, and for a typology of stakeholder benefits, which together are used to construct an initial proposal for a stakeholder benefits analysis tool (SBAT), which can be used to map stakeholder roles to stakeholder benefits. This tool has been tested by an expert group, and revised. This exploratory study is an important first step towards the development of tools and approaches for understanding the benefits sought by a wide range of different stakeholder groups in e-government. Progress in the development of such tools is important for the development of knowledge and practice, policy, and evaluation with respect to stakeholder engagement with, and participation in, e-government.     

Knowledge management practices and performance: are they truly linked?

Knowledge management (KM) has often been claimed to be an essential ingredient in building competitive advantage. Yet, KM adoption is relatively slow, especially in the Malaysian context. Most organizations are unsure if the promised performance improvement is just a passing fad. This study intends to provide empirical verifications to support the link between KM practices and performance outcomes for organizations. Responses from 180 knowledge-based organizations were analysed. The analysis indicated that knowledge acquisition and knowledge utilization positively influenced strategic and operational improvement in organizations, whereas the positive effect of knowledge dissemination was only evident in the case of strategic improvement. Organization size had some interesting moderating impact on the tested relationships.     

On the Comparison of the Images of the Protagonists and the Conflicts of the Plots between William Shakespeare and Guan Hanqing''''s Tragedies

I.TheTragediesofShakespeare1.1.AnAnalysisoftherolesinShakespeare’stragediesTake“Hamlet”asexamples:Hamletisaboutanemotionallyscarredyoungmantryingtoavengethemurderofhisfather,theking.TheghostofHamlet'sfatherappearstoHamlet,tellinghimthathewasmurderedbyhisbrother,Claudius,whohasnowbecometheking.ClaudiushasalsomarriedGertrude,theoldking'swidowandHamlet'smother.Hamletisappalledbyhismother'sactionsandbywhattheghosttellshimaboutClaudius'scold-bloodedmurderofhisownbrother.Tobuytimetoplothisr…     

At the Intersection of the Digital Divide and the Knowledge Gap: Do Knowledge Domains and Measures Matter?

This study reports on knowledge gain, examined through three separate measures (free recall, comprehension and recognition) among high- and low-education groups who used two types of news media (newspaper vs. online) to consume two kinds of news (public affairs vs. entertainment). Results (n = 123) confirm the knowledge gap and validate concerns about the digital divide. Yet three different knowledge acquisition measures generated dissimilar findings: strong education effects for free recall, strong media format effects for recognition, and strong interaction effects between education and media format for comprehension. The implications of these inconsistencies are considered for measuring knowledge gaps in future research.     

Cultural Conflicts and Compatibility between the East and the West in The Joy Luck Club

Via a study of The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan's first effort, this essay discusses the cultural conflicts and compatibility between the East and the West as manifested by the conflicts and compatibility between two generations of Chinese Americans in the novel. The paper argues that different living environments, different cultural heritages of the East and the West as well as different values are the main causes of the mother-daughter conflicts in the novel. The paper concludes that these causes could also be regarded as the root of the cultural conflicts between the East and the West in general. More importantly, after a series of efforts, the two generations are in harmony, which stands for the cultural compatibility between the East and the West.     

Cultural Conflicts and Compatibility between the East and the West in The Joy Luck Club

Via a study of The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan＇s first effort, this essay discusses the cultural conflicts and compatibiliry between the East and the West as manifested by the conflicts and compatibility between two generations of Chinese Americans in the novel. The paper argues that different living environments, different cultural heritages of the East and the West as well as different values are the main causes of the mother-daughter conflicts in the novel. The paper concludes that these causes could also be regarded as the root of the cultural conflicts between the East and the West in general. More importantly, after a series of efforts, the two generations are in harmony, which stands for the cultural compatibility between the East and the West.     

Why do people use mobile payment technologies and why would they continue? An examination and implications from India

Mobile payment technology continues to spread across the globe, but its diffusion has not been uniform. Its low usage in developing economies is of particular concern to policymakers since this technology has the potential to enable financial inclusion. In this study, in order to develop policy interventions for greater usage, we comparatively analyze factors impacting actual usage and future use intention. India, with its uneven trajectory of mobile payments, gives us an appropriate field to investigate citizens’ usage behaviour. Considering users’ perceptions of both positive and negative attributes of the technology, we develop research models under the umbrella of the valence framework. We utilize technology affordances and constraints theory (TACT) to refine the research models through an understanding of various innovative uses. To test the valence-TACT models, we collect survey responses of 551 citizens across four Indian cities. The results from the models show how certain factors, such as convenience, reflection, and security, have different impacts on actual usage and future use intention, respectively. These findings have implications for critical issues like security, risk, and digital literacy, and can help in the design of policy recommendations for enhancing the use of mobile payments, thereby impacting financial inclusion for all. The valence-TACT model provides a theoretical contribution to mobile payment and innovation literature and also offers several policy insights.     

Can cities shape socio-technical transitions and how would we know if they were?

This paper asks two - relatively simple - questions: can cities shape socio-technical transitions? And how would we know if they were? There are three key objectives. The first of these is to set out emerging, and in our view, convincing evidence, that large world cities have political aspirations to develop purposive and managed change in the socio-technical organisation of infrastructure networks that can be characterised as ‘systemic’ transitions. The second objective is conceptual in orientation and seeks to address how we understand transitions at the scale of the city, the role of ‘the city’ in undertaking transitions, and review both the strengths and shortcomings of the multi-level perspective (MLP) on socio-technical transitions in addressing this. The third objective is to identify what an urban transition would look like, and then constructs a new framework to conceptualise and research urban transitions. The paper then summarises the key aspects and implications of our argument.     

Which health and biomedical topics generate the most Facebook interest and the strongest citation relationships?

Although more than a million academic papers have been posted on Facebook, there is little detailed research about which fields or cross-field issues are involved and whether there are field or public interest relationships between Facebook mentions and future citations. In response, we identified health and biomedical scientific papers mentioned on Facebook and assigned subjects to them using the MeSH and Science Metrix journal classification schema. Multistage adaptive LASSO and unpenalized least-squares regressions were used to model Facebook mentions by fields and MeSH terms. The fields Science and Technology, General and Internal Medicine, Complementary and Alternative Medicine, and Sport Sciences produced higher Facebook mention counts than average. However, no MeSH cross-field issue differences were found in the rate of attracting Facebook mentions. The relationship between Facebook mentions and citations varies between both fields and MeSH cross-field issues. General and Internal Medicine, Cardiovascular System and Hematology and Developmental Biology have strongest correlations between Facebook mentions and citations, probably due to high citation rates and high Facebook visibility in these areas.     

Innovators and innovated: Newspapers and the postdigital future beyond the “death of print”

Along with other cultural organizations, newspapers, through waves of digital disruption, have become subject to a dominant narrative of crisis. But newspapers have long participated in change. A constructivist approach, qualified by consideration of media materiality, draws attention to diverse but essential processes of innovation around them. We see a contraflow of migration from digital to print, opening up a shared media space; bonding strategies are bringing multimedia to ink on paper, while bridging via boundary objects such as QR (Quick Response) codes are connecting the two. Among other initiatives, development of automation of news production and experiments with transparency are further evidence of an active embrace of change by newspapers that calls into question the discourse on their demise. This analysis inductively develops a nuanced account of the role of the newspaper as an object and as an institution. It suggests a hybrid, multifaceted, enduring presence of print in the complex media ecology of the future.     

Photolysis of the d-glycosides: α benzylfructofuranoside, β benzylfructopyranoside,and α and β phenyl,benzyl and β phenylethyl glucosides; and the bearing of the data upon the transfer of energy within molecules

Direct absorption of light by glycosides dissolved in water has been discovered to produce changes in optical activities and formation of material which reduces the Shaffer, Hartmann, Somogyi reagent. Comparison of these measurements indicates in many cases the same products as are formed by hydrolysis in acid. The β glucosides and α fructoside, however, apparently give optically inactive photolytic products.Absorption spectra were obtained for α benzylfructofuranoside and β benzylfructopyranoside, and were found to be the same in the near ultraviolet as those previously obtained for benzyl glucosides and benzyl alcohol.The absorption spectrum for freshly purified fructose gives a deeper minimum about λ240 mμ than the previously reported values. The latter, however, were approached when the dry crystals had stood in air for several months although no change occurred in their sp.rot., m.p. or general apperance.All the glycosides studied were white crystalline compounds. Less than five per cent. of the ultraviolet light of λ254 mμ they absorb produces reaction; nevertheless, the apparatus and procedures available were adequate to study the reaction conveniently in monochromatic light of this wave-length.The absorption spectra, the products of photolysis, and the quantum yields, the latter based on the reducing material formed, lead to the hypothesis that the photochemical reaction is produced by an intramolecular transfer of absorbed energy from the aglycone to the hemiacetal oxygen bridge which is the reactive center. The efficiency of this transfer is, as expected, greater for benzyl than for phenylethyl glucosides but phenyl glucosides, contrariwise, are the least efficient.The structure and energy possessed by the glycoside outside the aglycone have no measurable effect on the efficiency of the photochemical reaction when followed by measuring the reducing material produced although they change up to one hundred thousand fold the rates of the thermal hydrolyses in acid.     

Data aggregators,consumer data,and responsibility online: Who is tracking consumers online and should they stop?

The goal of this article is to examine the strategic choices of firms collecting consumer data online and to identify the roles and obligations of the actors within the current network of online tracking. In doing so, the focus shifts from placing the onus on individuals to make an informed choice, to justifying the roles and responsibilities of firms when gathering, aggregating, and using consumers' interests or behavior online. Firms online are uniquely positioned to undercut or to respect privacy expectations within three possible roles: as a member of a supply chain of information traders, within a network of surveillance online, and as an arm of law enforcement. These firms benefit from aggregating and analyzing consumer data and have an associated responsibility to not only minimize the harm to consumers but also to enact change where the firm is in the most knowledgeable and powerful position.     

Turnaround strategies of American and Japanese electronics corporations: How do they differ in formulating plans and achieving results?

Greater competitive and economic pressures have made corporate turnaround strategies critical to the survival of many high-technology international business organizations. The traditional differences between American and Japanese firms in the areas of human resources, production, finance, and marketing have recently appeared to converge on some common strategies employed to reverse an adverse corporate situation. American and Japanese high-technology firms are examined in terms of the antecedents, actions, and results of varying levels of turnaround strategy implementation. Survey responses from American and US subsidiaries of Japanese electronics firms illustrate that significant differences exist among levels of strategy implementation in assessing the need for a turnaround strategy, the actions taken to reverse an adverse situation, and the relative success of the actions. In addition to greater capacity utilization, low turnaround plans are generally enacted by redesigning the product or process, but successful high turnaround plans are implemented most often by gain sharing or profit sharing, as well as by eliminating unprofitable products. American firms achieve greater return on investment, operating profit margin, and cash flow, but lower sales growth and less unit labor cost improvement than Japanese corporations. These results are discussed for managerial insights into the strategy formulation process of international high-technology firms for successful competitive advantage.     

‘Power and the digital divide’

The ethical and political dilemmas raised byInformation and Communication Technology (ICT)have only just begun to be understood. Theimpact of centralised data collection, masscommunication technologies or the centrality ofcomputer technology as a means of accessingimportant social institutions, all poseimportant ethical and political questions. As away of capturing some of these effects I willcharacterise them in terms of the type of powerand, more particularly, the Power-over peoplethat they exercise. My choice of thisparticular nomenclature is that it allows us todescribe, firstly, how specific technologiesoperate and second, exactly what sorts ofconstraints they impose on people. The reasonfor this focus has to do with a further aim ofthe essay, which is to intervene in aparticular type of debate that is often hadaround the appropriate use and scope oftheories of power that are employed in thinkingabout ICT, especially those theories associatedwith the work of Michel Foucault. There isconsiderable use of his work in computerethics, but my claim will be that despite theproductive uses of his work in the areas ofsurveillance, for instance, it does not exhaustthe larger potential of his work on power and,in part, `government.' I will argue that inorder to properly understand the politicalimpact of some aspects of ICT, especially thedigital divide, one needs an account of howpower operates that includes more traditionaltypes of power-over. To the extent that I willdeal with these concerns, the paper is both acontribution to debates about the nature andscope of Foucault's theory of power and to theissue of the effects of the digital divide.     

Between class and status? Examining the digital divide in Finland,the United Kingdom,and Greece

This article examines the digital divide in terms of access and the cultural use purposes of the Internet in Finland, the United Kingdom, and Greece. The analysis is based on data from Finnish, British, and Greek sections of Eurobarometer collected in 2013 (N = 3,009). Separate measures for class and status are applied in the analysis. The findings indicate that both access to and use of the Internet for cultural purposes are affected by a number of interdependent factors, whose effects and strengths vary significantly among the countries.     

Model reduction using the stability-equation method and the Padé approximation method

A combined method making use of the advantages of the stability-equation method and the Padé approximation method for reducing high order transfer functions of single-input/single-output systems and multivariable systems is presented. The reduction procedure is simple and computer-oriented. All the reduced models are guaranteed to be stable if the original system is stable. The proposed method is applied to the investigation of (1) the effect of model reduction on the limit-cycle of non-linear systems and (2) the effect of model reduction on Horowitz compensators. Detailed calculations are given and comparisons with results in the current literature are made.     

Sicily or the Sea of Tranquility? Mapping and naming the moon

In their race to provide the ultimate guide to the moon, two 17th-century astronomers proposed lunar maps and nomenclatures that they hoped would gain international currency. But the names we use today were those proposed by the Jesuit, a friend of Galileo's persecutors, in a book whose purpose was to refute the Copernican system once and for all. We now believe that Riccioli was wrong about the universe, but why do we still use his nomenclature? The keys to this foundational visual debate in astronomical image-making are the moon maps themselves.